Serving the Euro‐consumer: a marketing challenge or a case for intervention?

Pan‐European integration through the mechanism of the Single European Market poses a unique challenge to marketing‐led business organizations, as the needs and requirements of the putative Euro‐consumer can be difficult to identify and categorize. Despite difficulties in the standardization of data capture methods, much headway has been made in the development of European‐wide socio‐demographic and psychographic consumer typologies and resultant decision‐support systems, which transcend purely national boundaries and look at alternative bases for segmentation. However, despite these efforts, the real barriers still lie in the lack of enforceable consumer protection measures. A greater degree of standardization and communication in this area is a sine qua non if the emergence of a true Euro‐consumer is to become reality.